Remember, in elementary school, when you had a writer’s notebook and you could fill the pages with whatever stories or thoughts or ideas you had in your brain. It was so relaxing, so enjoyable and often you couldn’t wait to open up that writer’s notebook. What if I said you could and should still have a “writer’s notebook” as an adult. But, let’s become a little more mature and call it journaling. Keeping a personal journal is a great way to connect with yourself, your creativity and so much more! There are to many types of personal journals
Different Journals & Their Benefits
There are many types of personal journals and each of them has their own benefits. I have found some people love just focusing on one type of journal, while others enjoy having multiple personal journals for different parts of their lives.
Goal-Setting Journal
A goal-setting journal is one of my favorite types of personal journals. There are so many amazing benefits to goal-setting. When you set goals, you trigger new behaviors.
Goal setting helps guide your focus and gets you moving in the right direction.
When you work through a goal-setting journal, you are measuring your success with the goals you have decided upon. You can’t always measure your successes without having proof that they were a goal. Set aside 15-20 minutes and write about your goals and your progress towards those goals. It will keep you accountable. Many guided personal journals have goal setting pages included in them. When you are feeling unmotivated or want to give up, it is always a good time to pull out your goal-setting journal and look at the progress you have made in your goals.
Mind Journal
This is a therapeutic journal and overall, I like to think of this type of personal journal as a “mind dump” journal. You can fill this journal up with pretty much anything that comes to mind. List of what you are grateful for, goals, problems/solutions, ideas etc. Writing about events or problems or making lists can be very therapeutic and really just let you release your thoughts and put them on paper. You can also use a guided self-care journal as a mind journal if you need more of a structured type of personal journal.
Healing Journal
A healing journal can be one of the more tough types of personal journals. When using a healing journal, you are going to dive deeply into your emotions, past, present, and most likely, your future. You are going to be discovering and learning about your pain, forgiveness, and so much more. Often, people find they need to heal their inner child while using a healing journal. This type of personal journal is going to allow you to give yourself the strength you need to start to heal.
Self-Love
This is a type of personal journal I believe EVERYONE should have on their nightstand. Ev-er-y-one! We all need to love ourselves more. It is becoming an enormous problem in our society. People are just looking and seeing the negative in themselves way more than the positive! We need to look within ourselves and see how amazing we really are and how we are each unique and special in our own ways. By starting a self-love journal, you can keep track of and write about ways you are showing yourself self-love and building your self-worth. A self-care journal is a great journal for this!
Creative Journal
This is the last type of personal journal I am going to write about. Although there are plenty more. These are my favorites. A creative journal is exactly like what it sounds like. It is a place for you to be creative. You can write your thoughts, stories, poetry, mind maps, plays, pretty much anything that gets your creative juices flowing should be in this type of personal journal. People often use creative journals to get ideas on paper. I read one person redesigned their living room in their creative journal, another wrote a whole children’s book. There are no rules when writing (drawing) or working in your creative journal. It is a blank canvas and you can use your creativity to fill it up!
With so many types of personal journals out there. I know it can feel overwhelming and difficult to figure out which one is best for you. You should always look into what you feel is most important in your life right now. What you really need. Is it healing,goal setting, self-love, creativity, a mind dump? If you are just unsure of where to start, grab a guided journal. These journals will help you figure out what part you really need to focus on.
